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Saturday, May 12, 2012

A renewal of vows? Pull the other one

There is a school of thought that says that once a
government gets itself into a position where it needs a relaunch, the brand is
probably already so badly tarnished as to render the whole exercise pointless.

To be fair, the Coalition is probably not at that point yet.
It is only two years into its existence, and governments of a far older vintage
have come back strongly from similar periods of mid-term blues before now.

But the largely negative reaction to this week’s relaunch,
with Wednesday’s Queen’s Speech at its centrepiece, does suggest that the
government’s current difficulties go deeper than merely a run of bad headlines.

Coming in the wake of a disastrous Budget, a dismal set of
local election results, and the continuing slow drip of damaging revelations from
the Leveson Inquiry, it seems the Coalition is currently suffering from a bad
case of the political Reverse Midas Touch.

Three major criticisms have been made of the legislative
package announced by Her Majesty in what, for her, was surely the least eagerly-awaited
public engagement of this her Diamond Jubilee year.

The first was that, with only 16 Bills, it was ‘too thin,’
but for my part, I wonder whether this was not in fact a point in its favour.

Over the past two decades, we have been subjected to an
increasing deluge of legislation, for instance the 21 criminal justice bills spewed
out by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s administrations over the course of 13
years.

A Conservative-led government, committed to reducing the burden
of regulation and shrinking the size of the state, should perhaps have made
more of a virtue of this year’s relative paucity.

The second most oft-heard criticism this week was that there
was little or nothing in the programme specifically directed towards tackling
the country’s current economic difficulties or producing a programme for
growth.

But this, surely, is a category error. Budgets, not Queen’s Speeches, are where you
set out your economic policy, and Labour leader Ed Miliband should perhaps have
known better than to make the main focus of his attack.

The third main criticism of the Speech – and the biggest one
as far as most Tory backbenchers are concerned – was that it concentrated too
much on Lib Dem hobby-horses such as House of Lords reform and not enough on issues
that mat

Again, this depends on your point of view. A second chamber elected by proportional
representation from region-wide constituencies could well provide a stronger
voice for regions such as the North-East – but I can well understand why the
Tories, in particular, would not want that.

For me, the most fundamental flaw in Wednesday’s speech was
not that it was too thin, too lacking in economic content or too Liberal Democrat,
but that it lacked a unifying narrative which would give people a reason to
support the government.

Say what you like about Mr Blair, his Queen’s Speeches never
suffered from this deficiency, even if, as time went on, they tended to be more
about protecting people from nightmares than giving them dreams of a better
future.

Perhaps the reason it lacked a unifying theme because it was
less the product of one man’s over-arching vision and more the product of
compromise between the government’s two constituent parties.

In this respect, the most interesting political story of the
week was not the Speech, but Prime Minister David Cameron’s interview with the
Daily Mail in which he bemoaned his lack of freedom of action to do the things
he really wanted.

What was especially notable about this is that, while Lib
Dem leader Nick Clegg loudly and often complains about the Conservatives, Mr
Cameron very rarely does the same about the Lib Dems.

Yet here was the Prime Minister saying: “There is a growing list of things that I
want to do but can’t…..there is a list of things that I am looking forward to
doing if I can win an election and run a Conservative-only government.”

This week’s relaunch had been billed in advance by some
cynics as the Coalition’s “renewal of vows,” but Mr Cameron’s interview shows this
to be well wide of the mark.

In truth, it seems to be heading all the more rapidly for
the divorce courts.

1 comment:

I think the public's patience with traditional politicians is at an all time high. It seems like non-traditional politicians such as Boris Johnson are popular these days. It seems like parties such as UKIP and even BNP are seeing openings as well.bamboo investment

"He saw politics very much like Trollope, as the interplay of personalities seeking preferment, rather than, like me, as a conflict of principles and programmes about social and economic change."

Denis Healey, writing about Roy Jenkins in "The Time of My Life."

"I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with a series of far-fetched resolutions, and these are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code. And you go through the years sticking to that, outdated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council, a Labour council, hiring taxis to scuttle round the city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'll tell you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's homes and with people's services."

Neil Kinnock, Bournemouth 1985

"But the most eloquent message concerns the Blair government. It must be right at all times. Above all, the integrity of the leader can never be challenged. He never did hype up intelligence. He didn't take Britain to war on any other than the stated terms. Any suggestion of half-truth, or disguised intention, or concealed Bushite promises is the most disgraceful imaginable charge that deserves a state response that knows no limit.

"That's how a sideshow came to take over national life. Now it seems to have taken a wretched, guiltless man's life with it. Such is the dynamic that can be unleashed by a leader who believes his own reputation to be the core value his country must defend."

Hugo Young, on the death of Dr David Kelly, 2003

"The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life."